OPINION — It was a very busy day for Richard Nixon. From the moment Air Force One touched down in Mobile, Alabama, on May 25, 1971, it was a nonstop whirlwind of events.
Gov. George Wallace, who had run against Nixon for the presidency in 1968 and would do so again a year later, greeted him. A newlywed, Wallace’s second wife was already making her influence over him known.
The Democrat’s usual dark business suit was hanging in a closet back in the Governor’s Mansion, replaced by a wild, ultramodern white suit with a salmon shirt and plaid salmon tie. (That was, after all, the mercifully brief “Peacock Revolution,” when outlandish, garish colors dominated Swinging Seventies fashion.)
